Bangladesh’s exiled acting opposition leader gets jail term in absentia

A Bangladesh court on Wednesday sentenced the exiled acting chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and his wife to jail in absentia after finding them guilty of accumulating wealth beyond their declared income.
The sentences come amid large BNP protest rallies, calling for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and for the next election, due in January, to be held under a neutral caretaker government – a demand her government has rejected.
Tarique Rahman was sentenced to nine years in jail. He has also been fined 30 million taka ($274,200) in the case filed in 2007, Public Prosecutor Mosharrof Hossain told reporters after the verdict and sentence were announced amid protests by pro-BNP lawyers in the court premises.
His wife was sentenced to three years in jail. Bangladesh does not have an extradition treaty with Britain, where Rahman and his wife have lived since 2008. But he will be jailed if he returns to Bangladesh.
The opposition has been in disarray since Rahman’s mother and party leader, former premier Khaleda Zia, was jailed on corruption charges in 2018, with Rahman trying to run its campaign from exile.